Manticore - Review by DeepSeven

Manticore – (2006) staring Robert Beltran and Heather Donahue

TiVo grabbed this movie for me off Sci-Fi channel last Saturday night. I must admit, it was not half bad. The story, premise, and visuals were all done very well. I had to watch it one and a half times to really “see” the movie. I really could not understand “why” in this movie. Why did the plot develop as it did?

Here is the skinny.

We start in Iraq during the current War on Terror. A group of Iraqis decide to awake the “twins” which are the two manticores that are turn to stone by looking at each other. They do this with the help of a magic amulet. The magic amulet also allows the one person who wears it not to be killed by the manticore. One of the followers changes his mind and breaks one of the statues during the awakening ritual. This means that now the one manticore can never be stopped because the only way to kill it is to turn it to stone by looking at it’s twin. Or so they thought… Actually it wipes out an entire city of locals, and then kills off the Army guys that come in to help. Eventually, they figure out the lore of the beast and turn it to stone with a mirror. Get it? It thinks that it is seeing the twin. However the mirror breaks and they end up using a video camera with the viewscreen turned around. Boo. I will take the mirror, but a video makes it think it is seeing it’s twin? Come on.

What I do not get is the WHY. Why did this Iraqi summon a mythical beast to kill mainly his own people? He says it was summoned to free the land of Babylon of the non-believers, however it seemed to kill indiscriminately. The only person who was safe is the person wearing the amulet. When the amulet broke, he got eaten. It really seemed like a waste of a storyline. I would rather it been awoke on accident. Maybe they should have not awoke it at all and saved the money on production…

BEST LINE: “Throw the grenade before the battery dies!”